yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

Jaipur Journals: A Love Letter to the Greatest Literary Show on Earth  Namita Gokhale Penguin Viking 2020 ISBN: 9780670093557 During the recent trip to Delhi as we walked in Connaught Place I told my friend of 2 instances that I had come across amidst its inviting environs. These included young people, dressed for the purpose, dancing to music, on an early morning. I stay in Delhi but am yet to come across such a happening Connaught Place she responded. Adding, I only see what I always see here. I then told her what I recalled William Darlymple (of The City of Djinns fame) say “ I now do not now notice aspects of Delhi like I used to ”. Manu Joseph too had mentioned, “ Only outsiders can notice certain aspects about a place ”. Both these lines I had come across about 4 years ago at Jaipur; the only time I attended the Jaipur Literature Festival or JLF. Besides getting to know of authors I was yet to read, to listen to those I was familiar with, being amids...

After my first experience at the Jaipur Literature Festival ( 2017 edition ) a friend called and asked if it was about fun ( read food ), glamour ( read wardrobe ) or books ( read buying, reading, knowing, listening to and interacting with authors ). It is about all of this and more, you need to savour the experience once, get a feel of the scale and fervour, and develop your own understanding of the festival. A friend says we are a nation of melas, and this is a wonderful one! Not very easy to choose favourites in such scenario but if I had to pick two threads it would be the books on history and one liners. It was story-telling at its finest and changed the way I understood history could be discussed. Suzannah Lipscomb talked of ‘The lovers who changed history’ and Giles Milton of ‘The spice trader who changed history’. The later, to quote William Dalrymple, “a master class in history”. What I share (and discuss) below are one-liners that I came across and that stayed...